







' LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 




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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 









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PASTORAL POEM 



AND 



OTHER PIECES. 



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BT JOHN McGOVERN. 




CHICAGO : 

UNION PUBLISHING HOUSE. 

1882. 






M i*-7 



Copyright, 1882, by John McGovern. 



Upon the sails which urge my ship along 
The Architect has writ that all shall sink 
Into eternity. I therefore cast 
A bottle in the sea. 



TO 

Ml~ BELOVED WIFE, 

a hastening friend, 

xvhen even noble duty might hate come 

with statelt step, 

i dedicate these lines. 

The Author. 



A PASTORAL POEM. 



Immersed in sunshine, tremulous, intense, 

Lie depths of wheat, and corn, and pasturage ; 

And where the acres meet in rivalry, 

A miser-pond evades the Sun-King's tithes, 

Hiding with lily leaves an envied hoard. 

Far off, an oaken family surround 

A giant of hard fibre, who has sat 

At feast with Time himself, and banqueted 

On centuries. There well-fed cattle stand, 

Watching unenviously the outer sky, 

Where cloud-flocks graze upon the sides of heaven. 

Some proud pond Ararat has stayed a plank 

And raised it well aslant ; upon this perch 

A row of turtles bask their checkered backs, 

And view with stolid look the overtures 

Of nodding reeds and fawning marsh-grass nigh. 

The weary wheat-stems stoop like mendicants, 

Whi^e alien rye-stalks rear their empty heads 

To officer the legions massed as close 



A PASTORAL POEM. 

As Persians were on Marathon. The corn— 
( Just o'er a gray worm-fence where chipmunks romp ) 
A green, cockaded host, in phalanx drawn, 
Each soldier armed with many cutlasses- 
Bespeaks the pomp of disciplined array, 
Nor flinches in the fervor of the sun. 

O'er all a storm-portending haze ; from all, 
A heated perfume— clover, wheat, and corn. 



The swanlike clouds that swam with swelling wing 

In tropic, halcyon, horizon seas, 

Have changed to furious cars of war, and drive 

To offer scowling battle with the sun. 

High o'er Andean lines of cloud there looms 

A solemn Chimborazo of the sky, 

And from its avalanching sides flash forth 

The spears of hosts in heavenly ambuscade. 

The black clouds upward clamber, and the mount 
Attains new height, till now, as Titans mad 
Pile other mountains on too recklessly, 
The upper fabric topples— yet, indeed, 
Some nightmare compromise with gravity 
Leaves Earth uncrushed? 



A PASTORAL POEM. 

Anon, a horrid sight 
Hovers on high: The flapping stormcloucl seems 
A mighty vampire come to snck the world. 

Hotly the archers pour their golden darts 
From parapets of light and battlements 
With glory blazing — drcadlessly and dire 
Not less, their hideous enemy assaults 
The splendid citadel — alas ! how soon 
Beleaguered Day is fallen prisoner! 

Now dirgoless shadows in long pageant come, 
Of gloom the celebrants, death-angel-like; 
And as their progress blackens field and poni 
The turtles scramble down in clumsy haste, 
And loyal cornstalks on the distant hill 
Wave goodbys sunward with bright oriflammes. 

Down through an air come up from nether earth, 
Forth from the turmoil of inverted seas, 
A fiery force with crash on crash is hurled 
Athwart the reaches of concavity, 
Thrilling all things as if the startled earth 
Rocked in volcanic violence. This signal made, 
The volleys of the pirate squadrons pound 
Hard on the haughty corn, the modest wheat, 
And on the lily leaves like musketry 
Rattle their ci'ystal bullets. Gusts of air 



10 A PASTORAL POEM. 

Chase nimble swirls of rain; through yeasty mists 

A million worlds join to the universe, 

And shackles of white lightning manacle 

The trembling sky. Heaven Is an idol-house 

Thick with abominations, and its walls, 

Its lurid walls, are darkened with the shapes 

Of pagan elements in revelry. 

Fiercer the orgy; round the guilty dome 

Rebellious whirlwinds mad in concourse plunge, 

And thunders join the treasonable fray 

Bellowing with insurrection. 

The storm recedes, the sun shines out, the clouds, 

Like fallen fortresses, their portals ope 

Before the flight of earthward-hurrying beams — 

And lo ! the couriers with their victory ! 

The music of the herd comes o'er the mead 

In homely cowbell tones, as rude to-day 

As in Pan's time. The clover-synod kneels— 

Each tiny bishop's mitre lit with gems — 

And pompous rustles fill the aisles of corn, 

As though the wives of modern Pharisees 

Passed to their public prayer. Behind a goirge 

Of ether icebergs Hope, at azure loom, 

In warp of snnrays with a woof of rain, 

Arches her rainbow web upon the black 

That curtains all the east, where crowds the storm. 

1875. 



NIGHT. 11 



O NIGHT! O NIGHT! 



How bright the carpet where Jehovah strides 
His constellations ! Hail ! O splendid Horn- 
Complete with glory— all thy Milky Way 
Pulsing eternity ! Man upward looks ; 
He looks, and upward aims ; and calm-eyed beasts 
That sleep not, have thy golden deep for dreams ! 
Lo I, most miserable of the flesh, 
Proclaim within me th robbings of the light 
From yonder stars. For I have something starlike 
Jealously sentineled, and leashed with heartstrings, 
Which when the heavens throw their portals wide 
To pay thee, Night, their ceremonial, 
Peers forth on each familiar galaxy, 
As if those beacons burned for its return. 
And as I lay my head at rest, each eve, 
Thy oft-recurring mandate'to obey, 
O ! Night, I feel my prisoner more glad, 
More confident of his release. Alas ! 
Why breaks my soul so quickly from my keep ? 



12 PRIEST OF THE MORNING. 

Why yearns, alas! my body for my soul? 

Alas ! why does my quivering form belie 

Its wretched doom when I upsend my eyes'? 

O Night! forgive my corporal delight! 

Forgive my body's envy of my soul ! 

Make my poor flesh and blood like calm-eyed beast's, 

And let me have thy golden deep for dreams ! 
1881. 



PRIEST OF THE MORNING. 



The morning twilight surges through the dome — 

The dawn awaits. So has my soul sat still, 

And, like this day, full late the beam of peace 

Has come from haunts deep in the Eastern stars. 

Fierce writhes and coils the Night, and westward rolls 

A mass of darkness and despair, a load 

To weight a Universe, put on a world! 

O life! O God! O sea of orient sky! 

There is with me an end of soughing waves !— 

An end of casting anchors in mid sea ! — 

An end of chart without a firmament! 

Now Morn uplifts this sinister pavilion ; 



PRIEST OF THE MORNING. 13 

Now valiant Hope rebukes my soul's confusion ; 

Now Joy stands at the gateways of my heart 

Guiding the flood. O Sun in hidden heaven ! 

Whose gold is liveried on thy couriers 

The utmost clouds— whose coming carpets Earth 

Beauteous with life— whose coming tunes the woods 

With warblers 1 sweet devotions — to my voice, 

My ruder song, give rapid messengers — 

The invisible acolytes of thy golden fane— 

To wing it to yon pillar in the air, 

Thy morning altar lit with silver fires ! 

Accept my offering; pour thy earliest gold 
Out on thy pitiful, who then shall be 
All holy-dipped, emerged from Paradise— 
A glorious slave, thy shining worshiper! 
1881. 



14 DEATH AHD MY FELLOWS. 



DEA TH AND MY FELLO WS. 



I thought, with selfish thankfulness : " If men 
"Were all immortal save myself, how sad, 
"How sadly terrible, would be my plight P 
"How like the Aztecs 1 captive I should be — 
" A victim for the knife, though loaded down 
" With luxuries — if I were hailed each morn 
" By brothers of the sun ! And, when I died, 
"With what astonishment the golden-aged 
" Would look upon my corpse ! my villain corpse I 
" That in their company had flashed a gem 
" Which had been stolen — property of soul 
" Sought by the Officer! 71 With thinking this, 
I went among my comrades yesterday, 
And offered them ambrosia for their locks 
Aud nectar in their cups ! I told them all, 
That godlike ichor made their countenance 
Most pleasurable — their flesh o'er- radiant! 
The world smiled like a narrow -sighted babe 
That sees, yet can but see, its mother's breast, 
And I, poor courtier, sick with giving joy, 



THE POET. 15 

Fled toward my dreams last night in dismal dread 
That Death should cast his ashes over me, 
And never-dying beings bear my pall! 



1881. 



THE POET. 



He sits before a great keyed instrument, 

The human heart — built like some Alpine mill 

To wheel its echoes to the joyous heights 

Or urge them through the gloom. And as he &its, 

O'er all the jarrings of the rough red rill 

That plunges clown to Death, he strikes a chord 

And Love reverberates. Pleased with his craft, 

He, holding all his keys, with quivering hands 

Joins on Affection's softening part, and plies 

Sad Duty's stops and lowly harmonies. 

Thus flows the psalm of Family and of Home— 
The sweetest measures of the poet's art, 
Yet on his mystic keyboard, oh ! how few 
The pipes that play !— how insignificant ! 



16 THE POET. 

II. 

Then comes the flame, the flaming stride of War — 

The poet's hearthstone set to head the graves 

Of slaughtered sire and son ! Then breaks the storm 

From forth the angry pipes ; then comes the roar 

Of mighty octaves, wild and haggardly, 

With passion-cries of freedom crashed and hurled 

In grievous ruin, like some city's sack 

Of precious wares. Behold yon tyrant's throne 

Set high beyond the hurt of cannon's wrath ! — 

Yet see it quake ! — aye ! 't is an airy thing 

To shore the moving deeps of Liberty ! 

in. 

The player trembles like his low-blown reeds, 
His hand is weak, the snow di-ifts through his pipes. 
Where breaks that flood which filled the gorge of life 
With such sweet-sounding waves that voyagers 
Baptized with freshened hearts ? — the gloria ! 
Why drowns he not with joyous giant chords 
The tempest of an unhomed, childless wo ? 

Thou heedest not ! The patriarchal ear 
Hears from the strains on High some cadences ; 
He holds his touch upon the keys thus light 
That he may join the Choir in unison. 



IRKOUTSK TO SAN FRANCISCO. 17 

Behold Ms aged face (chiseled by Time— 
An evil sculptor, yet a master-hand) ! 
Sublime he smiles and strikes the key of heaven, 
Asking of his still noble house of sound 
Bat this last anthem. Hark ! it swells anew ! 
Now breathe in prayer and fall ye on your knees ! 
Now lave ye in the holy waves of holy airs ! 
The God of Hosts hymns with his wafting worlds- 
Adoring Earth pulsates with Paradise ! 



1882. 



IRKOUTSK TO SAN FRANCISCO. 



• {By Telegraph, Dec. 21, 1881.) 

The grinding ices of the central sea 
Closed round our mariners. The continents 
Peered past the circle of the Dipper stars 
Through fog and storm— in fear. Then when the King 
Of Coldland fell upon these venturers 
He crushed their hardy ship within his hand, 
And cast them freezing toward Siberia. 
3 



18 IBKOUTSK TO SAN FRANCISCO. 

They touch the world again ; and all the world, 
Pleased like a mother with her babe at breast, 
Trembles with joy. These wonders have we seen 
This white-haired year of this hoar century. 

Irkutska to Francisco! ah! the road 

Has not thus always shrunk to nothingness ! 

Look on the exUe from the Russian's nod, 

Who plods, month after month, toward withered hearts, 

And sighs for holy Kieff and Moscow's dome 

Behind white Urars skylike barricades ! 

Think of the Man of Destiny, who stopped 

At Borodino's marsh, and sepulchered 

His polyglotted host ; and of his flight, 

In frosty fever and with starving maw, 

Toward burned Smolensky, Beresina's bridge, 

And Minska's ashes ! O the pestilence 

OfKonigsberg ! — the backward swath of death 

Two thousand miles ! Pass now to brighter days 

For pomp of man — blacker for Liberty ! 

Hear Eylau's storm ! See man's pale Conqueror 

Throw up his tell-tale breastworks on the plain ; 

Red Nieman basely coiling round her sons 

At Friedland, and the raft of Tilsit, made 

To barge the fortunes of a world of slaves ! 

Pass Jena, Wagram, Austerlitz, and Ulm ; 



IRKOUTSK TO SAN FRANCISCO. 19 

Make progress through great capitals o'erthrown 

To Paris, maniacal city, realm 

Best governed by a madman. Next to Spain : 

Leave him who flung himself upon a rock 

In the Atlantic, and take galleon 

With Christopher Columbus ; mutiny 

Against his greatness ; urge that he be thrown 

Among the floating grasses of the stinking seas ; 

Then help him rear the cross on Salvador, 

And render thanks that he shall die in rags 

Fanged by small envy. Then hear the Savage shriek, 

And see him leap the air as rifle-ball 

Tears his wild vitals. Smell the forest fires 

That keep great landscapes smoking like the pit 

Of an impatient hell. And when the oaks 

Have sturdily withstood tne woodman's blows 

Till falls the last of a long dynasty, 

Look on the canvas of the pioneer 

Spread o'er his peaceful van. Ere long the banks 

Of flowing waters point and prophecy 

The Patriarchal River. On its hills 

That stand a half-mile back and silent prate 

About the past, take Fremont's hand, and press 

Across the continent. Climb up the peaks 

And through the driven snow ; push now for life, 

As did the Arctic mariner on Lena's floes : 



20 IEKOUTSK TO SAN FRANCISCO. 

Toil on, o'er middle deserts ; climb new snows, 
And with the Pathfinder lie down to hear 
The solemn clangor of the Great Sonth Sea. 

Irkntska speaks ! How is it that we hear ? 
Did not these labors fall to man's poor lot ? 
Or has this planet had a nightmare dream 
And, starting up, proclaimed it History ? 

The papa lisped by kissing babe at night 
Did drift on word-waves from Siberia's plains- 
Did journey west, e'en like this telegraph, 
Full twenty thousand miles, and yet. did dwell 
Full. twenty thousand years upon the way ! 
How, then, shall simple songster read these signs ? 
Are scores of thousand zodiacs a jot 
To point God's periods ? Or is a flight 
That jibes at distance, mocks at time, itself 
An essence of the ages, or a soul 
Of dying world ? O God ! I can but see, 
Here in my darkness, that our compass spreads 
Within Thy narrowest metes ; I can but give 
For shortest record in Thy chronicles 
The years our dust shall moon yon noble sun ! 

The Aryan, this morning, stretched his hand, 
And, o'er a pathway strown with centuries, 



TO JOHN PETER LTDIARD. 21 

Knocked at the Golden Gate ! Such was the act ! 
Yet not more fugitive and brief than man ! 
Nor yet than his abode, this girdled orb I 
A spark of light, sped by the craft of man ; 
A flash of years hurled from the hand of God- 
So passes man's short history here on earth- 
So passes earth's short history here in heaven ! 



1881. 



1882. 



TO JOHN PETER LYDIAMD. 



The leaves will fall upon the green— 
The bard will sigh with grief ! 

Yet broader far will be the scene, 
And beautiful each leaf. 

Cold years will gather like the night— 
The bard will moan the snow ! 

Thine eye the more shall beam with light 
Thy heart the warmer glow. 



22 OBLIVION. 



OBLIVION. 



Man whitens into death and lays him down 

In dreadful slumber 'neath a roof-like mound 

That sinks soon in upon his dust. A stone 

His name proclaims a little longer, falls, 

And crumbles, having filled an empty use. 

Anon the plow rives up the fattened ground, 

And harvests press like anxious waves. Then war. 

The peaceful plowman flees before a host 

Of conquering invaders, come to sack, 

And strip, and pillage. Soon the straggling brush 

Starts into saplings, and the saplings wax 

To solemn woods. Now comes the simple bard, 

And peers with wonder in among the trees 

That weave their colors with the fragrant air, 

And sings : " This is the forest — this must be 

The forest called primeval, and untrod." 

Forward the cycles roll — the ax, the fires, 

The plow, the harvest moons, the grave, the sword, 

The impenetrable councils of the oaks, 



TO H. G. C. 23 

And last some circlings of a corse-like orb — 
Until the world, a worn and fluttering moth, 
Drops in the central conflagration and expires. 



1881. 



TO H. G. C. 



Bird in the woods ! how drear to me 
The moaning of the woods will be 
When thou dost sing tby morning lay 
In fairer forests, far away ! 

When ermined Winter scowled on thee— 
A wandering warbler, sad to see- 
Meek was thy mien 'neath his restraint, 
Thy plumes were piteous, not thy plaint. 

But when the Summer came to thee, 
How thou didst swell with melody ! 
Thy song will ever welcome be 
In my sweet-echoing memory. 



1882. 



THE SPARROW'S TOMB. 

Bird in the woods ! how mute will be 
These music-throbbing leayes to me 
When owls of envy, hawks of scorn, 
Hoot through the night, rail at the morn I 



THE SPARROW'S TOMB. 



A sparrow sank with plaintive wail ; 
" You hurt me, Wind ! " she said ; 
" I kill thee, birdling ! " screamed the gale, 
And fled. 

My Mary romped upon the lawn ; 
The place with laughter rang ; 
She glowed with color like the dawn, 
And sang. 

A ruffled little corse she lound ; 
Her heart more slowly throbbed ; 
She built a tiny funeral mound, 
And sobbed. 



1881. 



A SUNSET THOUGHT. 25 



A SUNSET THOUGHT. 



As in the east the clouds one e'en 
In solemn pageant bore Night's pall, 

There glittered in the west a scene 
Which my poor syllables recall. 

The sun a rapid red ball rolled 
Hard on an undergulf of sky ; 

In flames of amethyst and gold 
The funeral pyre of Day rose high. 

Beneath this radiant sunset view 
Cast on the west, a morass lay, 

And marshy fogs took pleasing hue 
That at the dawn were drear and gray. 

To mist and vapors death-distent 
With febrile taint, this transient spell 

Of solar necromancy lent 
The subtle tints of ocean shell. 

All heaven with mottled ether gleamed 
Flamboyantly before my eyes, 
4 



2B MEMOKT. 

And for a purple moment seemed 
The outer walls of Paradise. 

Bright waves of liquid jasper hove 
On soft Elysian shores of pearl, 

And iridescent Evening strove 
Her longest pennons to unfurl. 

Though I did thrill hefore this scope 

Of genie's principality, 
I thought : " The heaven afar is Hope, 
" The marsh beneath, Reality.' 1 '' 
1875. 



MEMOR2. 



Our hopes may lie as cold as love fear-sapped - 
As ripe to be inhumed oblivion- wrapped — 
Yet mournfully we keep them on their biers, 
Palled in the shadows of the gloomy years. 

Deep in our misty woe we hover prone 
Above their corses, and, with bated groan, 



A FRAGMENT. 27 

The story of their life and death recite 
Unto our only friend, the poor, blind Night. 

Our wounds are all we have — we love them well ; 
Their quickness pleases us — we nurse tHe spell ; 
Not one of us dare crave, for our distress, 
The clammy keep of blank Forgctfulness. 
1873. 



A FRAGMENT. 



Elberon, Sept. ig, 1881. 



Thou Garfield, on thy narrow cot of death 
In linen pall, hast statelier repose 
Than any form since mangered Bethlehem. 
O ! wake, one moment — wake, if but to hear 
A nation's sob of anguish, and a world 
Chanting thy mass ! Awake, if but to feel 
A people's jealous clamor for thy corse, 
Pinched now in piteous misery, aye, and dragged 

At Honor's car! 
1881. 



28 CLOUDS. 



CLOUDS. 



I saw a cloudlet, yestere'en, 

'Paled on a fulgent ray — 
A tiny buoy in azure seas, 

A golden thread its stay. 

Heaped in the east, to dizzy height, 
Darkening the Evening's red, 

A mural front of inky mist 

Scowled o'er the Day's death-bed. 

The cloudlet lost its anchoring 

And sailed in beauty free, 
To meet its wrath-cowled kin arrayed 

Beyond the ether-sea. 

Alas ! in half-an-hour it loomed 

A coign of vantage high 
Upon the buttressed battlements 

That fortified the sky. 

Gone was its snowy buoyancy — 
Fierce was its craggy form ; 



1873. 



A LEAF. 29 

It even threw a pall athwart 
The ramparts of the storm. 

I have seen joyous human hearts 

Lose every loving trait, 
And cloak themselves, till Death did come, 

In wo, and scorn, and hate. 



A LEAF. 



From out the topmost hulh — a budding sentry — 
A leaflet spread its green against the blue ; 

The songsters heralded its earthly entry, 
And it was christened in the Morning's dew. 

All through the summer, on an oak that towered 
A stately captain of his lordly kind, 

It fanned the birdlings in their nest embowered, 
Or from their housing turned the churlish wind. 



30 A LAKESIDE REVERIE. 

Then Autumn chanting came, in vestments sober, 
Bearing the cup of dissolution's lees ; 

Forth in the majesty of hazed October, 
A withered leaf was hearsed upon the breeze. 

1872 



A LAKESIDE. REVERIE. 



As if enticed from out some lustrous sea, 
Yon evening star drips with redundant beams. 
Forth from the generous east, the rising Moon 
Gives silvern charity, while pauper Earth 
Laves in her magic smiles, and laughs begemmed. 
Down at the hemming of her azure realm 
There goeth out afar, and right, and left, 
An aqueous glass, compound of stuff so pure 
That even mermaids would be chary lest 
Their sportings might offend its cleanliness. 
Brooched on the rippling offing of this sheet — 
A vague remoteness pampered by the gloam — 
In watery mimicry her likeness sits ; 
The wavelets coming to my feet steal each 



A LAKESIDE REVERIE. 81 

From it a tiny load of melting light, 

And seem a disciplined procession ; or, 

A weird-wove cordage of resplendent strands 

Thrown out from shore to give an anchorage, 

And held distent in deprecation lest, mayhap, 

The image which it fetters free itself 

And flee lrom Evening's court to Dusk's domain. 

From out a chapel's walls, back in the town, 
An organ's pipes impel rich sound-waves on 
To meet the liquid waves that pat the sands ; 
Nought but the deep substructure of the strain 
Floats to my drowsy car — it is enough ; 
My brain is pleased to conjure up the rest, 
And lose itself in harmonies that scorn 
The galling harness of acquaintanceship. 

Wild, wintry tossings o'er, Earth dreams to-night, 
While Peace with mother-vigil throws a spell 
Along the borders of this surness sea, 
And brooks no boisterous mockings of her sway. 

Perhaps a zephyr, romping with its mate, 
Annoys a sleepy leaf ; all else is mute. 

When last I stood upon this beach, the sky 
Was carmine, and the waters blood- like seemed ; 
I viewed Destruction's panoply, and breathed 



32 OCTOBER. 

An atmosphere made up of fright and awe. 
Not all the circlings of this hoary world 
In thin vacuity have meted out 
The fiery peer of that demoniac night. 
Chicago, 1873. 



OCTOBER. 



There is a holy time, ere Autumn's going — 
A radiant month embossed upon the year — 

When leaves wash in the sunshine overflowing 
To swell the splendor of the season's gear. 

The stately maples make their reverence sighing, 

As Nature wafts her solemn breath aby ; 
The birds in hush and sadness plan their flying 

To climes where snowflakes feather not the sky. 

When my heart-wounds have felt their softest ointments, 

October's pageantry arrayed the days ; 
And in the dead-house of my disappointments, 

Not one lies palled in Indian-Summer's haze. 

1872. 



UNREST. 



UNREST. 



The mind's a battle-field, 
Where fortressed doubtings yield 
To companies of stronger doubts, 
Whose boisterous jeers and skeptic snouts 
More oft annoy 
Than vouchsafe joy. 

Yet, if with faith I pray, 
Lo ! that same hour and day, 
With equal faith, my bitter foe 
May ask my great hope's overthrow — 
One faithful prayer 
No fruit will bear. 

As well pray " Shine, O Sun ! " 

As, " Let Thy will be done ! " 
A cry for even strength to bear 
Is in itself specific prayer — 
Beseeching God 

" Let me be God ! " 

5 



UNBEST. 

If we are thoughtless hurled 
Upon this frowning world, 
Clanking with manacles of sin, 
Forged ere our sorry lives begin — 
With flesh and mind 
To wrong inclined — 

Then it is truly base 
To breed the hapless race ; 
Unless from instinct men rebel, 
What an illimitable Hell 
When Matter crumbs 
And Time succumbs ! 

Does the great God permit 
A brutal fiend to sit 
In rival state, to rack the ghosts 
Of countless, helpless, human hosts 
Whose earthly all 
Was pain and gall ? 

If we could comprehend 
Soul-burning without end, 
Our utterance would have one sound — 
That we might 'scape the pit profound 
Where Satan rules 
Midst imps and ghouls. 



UNBEST. 3;3 

But thought unbidden delves, 
And men still ask themselves : 
" Is 't intuition or conceit 
That makes our lives seem incomplete 
Unless there he 
Futurity ?" 

The sweetest joys alloy, 
And our content destroy — 
Seem waspish satires fierce with barbs, 
And fiends in satisfying garbs — 
Hollow at best 
As hell-fool's jest. 

I lay upon my bed, 
And wondered if the dead 
Are tortured with the hopes and fears, 
The heavy hearts and burning tears, 
That weigh on us, 
And prey on us. 



1873. 



36 FAME. 



FAME. 



■Tall mountains meet, and giddy greet 
The clouds in their exalted homes ; 

What may they show, save ice and snow, 
Unto the fleets that pass their domes ? 

Their crests are bold with solar gold ; 

Their shimmering cliffs enchant the eye. ; 
Yet Earth shows not more dreary spot 

Than toilers in their heights descry. 

There points a peak which mortals seek — 
Fraught are its crags with human woes ; 

Shrill through its fasts shriek envy-blasts — 
Forever drift Hate's blinding snows. 

Its towering height beams with a light — 
The wondrous blaze of Glory's orb ; 

Still those who gaze feel most the rays, 
While they who climb no warmth absorb. 

Contentment creeps — Renown climbs steeps 
Where consummations ne'er appease ; 



THE CRY OF TOOTH. 



Below how oft, when Care's aloft, 
Unhappiness, distrustful, flees. 



1872. 



THE CRT OF YOUTH. 



When life eludes me, and I die, 
Will funeral-shrouded yessels ply 

A sohhing sea ; 
Or jagged minor-keyed refrains 
And sombre-decorated trains 

Attendant be ? 

Will gloomy flags and pennons float 
At solemn half-mast — will remote 

Humanity 
Feel that a force hath disappeared, 
And left Earth nought but stark and biered 

Inanity ? 

Will I on stately staging lie, 
While lutes attune to grief-ode's cry 
And laureates rhyme ? 



38 I PRAV. — ALFRED MYEK. 

Will centuries increase my fame — 
Will History shout out my name 
To clockless time ? 
1873. 



I PRAT. 



When white-eyed Death shall fright my timid flesh, 
And chase my spirit from his charnelry, 
May willing yet unwilling hands take me 
To unoffended Nature. Then, O God ! 
Give me the memory of an honest man, 
And unseen flowers shall keep my grave as sweet 
As lilac-banks that make one narrow week 
The only recollection of a year. 
1881. 



ALFRED MTER. 



There was a weather-guessing man appointed, 
And with the unction of State pay anointed ; 



TURN, OH, TE SOULS. 39 

When this man died, they said, without effront'ry, 
" He rendered Signal Service to his country.'" 
1872. 



TURN, OH ! IE SOULS ! 



Some souls have climbed, with bent ill-timed, 

High up the fastnesses of Fate, 
And have been stung, and rudely flung 

Far downward by Mishap and Hate. 

Across Life's plain, with will inane, 
They backward walk, nor care to view 

Aught save the Past, until, at last, 
Eternity shall all renew. 

Striving to hearse their pains they curse 
Each lengthened day, each dreary night, 

And fall with groans o'er little stones 
That harm not those who walk aright. 

The one great "Wo of long ago 
Frowns down upon their glamoured gaze 



COLOGNE ON WHITE CLOVEB. 

In dim relief, snow-capped with grief, 
Cloud- frocked in memory's mystic haze. 

Turn, oh, ye souls ! to brighter goals ! 

Watch not Despair's appalling brow I 
The altar flames within Hope's fanes 

Flash forth in splendor even now. 

Turn, oh, ye souls ! Let solemn tolls 
No longer knell o'er bliss inhumed ! 

Peal out the birth of suffering Worth 
In noble purposes illumed ! 



1874. 



COLOGNE ON WHITE CLOVER. 

IN THE PARK. 

By golden strand of crimson sea, 
Through broad exotic bowers, 

My little Mary walked with me 
And sighed for sweeter flowers. 

She turned from mounds of flaming red 
To search the sward for clover ; 
" I only want zose f 'owers," she said, 
"Wis c'ogne all spwinkled over." 



1882. 



A METAPHOR. 41 



A METAPHOR. 



Behold, in the middle of the seas, upon a rock 
cresting the hot waves, a little man with a wide 
jaw, with a gray cutaway coat, with a peculiar 
hat ! He is imprisoned, he is a cipher, he is of 
slight importance ! Nay, he is of .the utmost 
importance. He is the greatest man who ever 
lived. Look once again ! He has wasted away. 
The heat of the sun has beaten upon his tar- 
scented dwelling, and hastened his death. He 
hears the roar of the great storm on the ocean. 
He believes the enemy has opened with every 
piece of its artillery. He orders a corps into the 
open doors of death. The guns are turned, the 
enemy is in a panic, and the king of kings sits 
down to write his bulletin : " Head of the Army 

" he writes, and his spirit passes in the midst 

of the vision. A world of petty men breathes in 
God-given relief. A man is dead the beatings of 
whose heart sent the direst terrors through the 
kingdoms of this world. 
6 



42 A FLIGHT OF FANCT. 

In this little earth, this St. Helena of space, 
there is immured the Mind of Man, beaten by the 
storms, prostrated by the passions, circumscribed 
by the frequent vicissitudes of human life. Again : 
It is surely a cipher ; it belongs simply in this 
Saint Helena, to which it seems indigenous ! 
Nay. Who shall take it upon himself to say that 
this celestial fire, this Mind of Man, is not co- 
eternal with the other works of God which inter- 
sperse the universes, and who, too, shall say that 
this toadlike planet, the earth, ugly and venom- 
ous, wears not yet a precious jewel in its head ? 
1880. 



A FLIGHT OF FANCY. 



I fell, to talking with a learned man. He spoke 
of the telephone, and said they would succeed 
soon in using a ray of light to conduct the waves 
of sound. It was simple as the sun itself ! You 
took a concave reflector, bathed in some certain 
chemicals, turned the rays of sunlight which en- 



A FLIGHT OF FANCY. 43 

tered it nporf some far-off reflector of the same 
kind, perhaps six miles away. It flashed in re- 
sponse to the line of light established. You 
spoke into your own reflector ; your voice sounded 
in the reflector six miles away, having traveled 
along the ray of light. Now for my thought : 
Here is the gross beginning of the use of light as 
a highway. Upon this golden highway we can 
travel to Orion, and all his fires shall pulsate to 
our syllables ! And, behold ! there is, beyond 
this slow-paced Light, which travels to but one 
world in a second, another force — the grand invis- 
ible chain which holds the stars together— Gravi- 
tation ! This chain shall be the turnpike of our 
tongues, and we shall speak to all the orbs in 
space ! And now, shall we believe these elder 
worlds have not, too, sat at Nature's feet ? May 
not they then have often spoken us, as the steam- 
ship, passing its sister in the watery spaces, sends 
forth a word of greeting ? Then may the tradi- 
tions of superstition— traditions of voices in the 
sky— have no improbability save the single coin- 
cidence of the tongue spoken being intelligible to 
terrestrial ears ! 
1880. 



44 ASTK0N03IV AND LOVE. 



ASTRONOMY AND LOVE. 



An aged seer sat in his tower at night, 

And watched this journeying world's liege satellite 

In plenitnde of splendor move on high 

And gild the clondy vestments of the sky. 

An air of lore prevailed ahout the sage — 

An air of lore perceptible as Age. 
He sat alone, 

And cried : " O God ! I vaunted, years ago, 
" That ignorance was a conquerable wo ; 
" But now, alas ! e'en while I grasp the keys 
" Which would unlock thine ark of mysteries, 
" My trammels tighten, and my dust is urned — 
" My brains go back to nothingness unlearned." 

A beauteous maiden, in that self-same hour, 
Looked from her chamber-window toward the tower. 
That night, a youth, in her esteem arrayed, 
Had by a slight, unwitting sign betrayed 
His love and hope unto her watchful eye, 
And made her happy, while he made her shy. 



SAD RIVALRIES. 45 

Thus she had left Mm, seeming hard to win — 
Her fears dispelled where his were ushered in. 
As was her nightly wont, she viewed the dome 
Where new-born knowledge found a fostering home, 
And saw the old astronomer intent 
( With penetrating sight by Science lent ) 
On stellar depth, or lunar waste of world!, 
Or meteor down from dizzy zenith hurled ; 
And watched his shadowy acts with thought and gaze. 
Akin to those which lassies in the days 
Of hoar Astrology and Alchemy, 
Bestowed on Gebir or on Doctor Dee. 

She sat alone, 
Her beauty rarefied by halcyon rays 
Of lavish moonlight white as calcium-blaze, 
And planned a life of joy without rebuff, 
And whispered to her heart : " I know enough." 
1875. 



SAD RIVALRIES. 



Sometimes to female convict-pens, I've read in prison-tales, 
There come, robed in their finery, grand ladies from the town, 



46 THE FIKST SNOW. 

And God's most wretched stretch their necks far o'er impeding 

pales, 
And, mute with greedy interest, inspect each passing gown. 

And then, for days, they proudly deck their prison-habit lank 
With leprous shreds of calicoes, set with a slavish care 
That smacks the inspiration of the latest fashion-prank 
They noted in the trapping of their visitors' rich wear. 

Tnese Autumn-days the city streets begin their thin parades 
Of what few dusty, starveling leaves the cnrb-cramped maples 

lose, 
And ape the cushioned luxury of giant-arbored glades, — 
The carpetings imperial of sylvan avenues. 
1873. 



THE FIRST SNO W. 



Swift meteors coursed the upper night 
The midnight groaned with snow ; 

The under night, w^th leaves bedight, 
Roamed sadly to and fro. 



THE FIKST SHOW. 

Then came a white November morn. 

A waking romp and shout 
Of chubby Mary, three years born — 

Of Wonder, looking out. 

" What is zat s'uff on everysing ! " 

" Why that is snow, my dear." 
*' Zen it is Chwis'mas. Zis will bwins 
Old Santa Clauses here ! " 

Old Fat now tugging at a snelf ; 

Now gorgeous with a frov. m 
Xow working slyly like an elf, 

To get a hammer down. 

:f Don't bozzer me ! I sink you'd see 
I"s got all I can 'ten' to ; 
I 's worried my life out of me 
Wis twouble I has been to ! " 

And so she works, and puffs, and pounds, 
With hammer, socks, and tacks, 

And sings with joy, and hides the wounds 
Of half a dozen whacks. 

At last the socks— a dozen quite— 

Hang in a circling row, 
With Fatty sunny as the light 

In the south window's bow : 



48 HELP. 

" O my ! I wouldn't for zis worl' 

Have Santa Clauses s'out : 

' Mary-to-Harriet, you bad little girl I 

Your s'ockin's was n't out ! " " 
1881. 



HELP ! 



Lost in the maelstrom of this sinless world's disdain, 
Crouched on a pier that crept out from the city, 

She pictured to herself her like in grief and pain, 
And, self-oblivious, wept in fervid pity. 

Then moans and dizzy thoughts— a shivering wish to share 
The friendly grave's release from spectral hauntings ; 

Fate holding out the awful chalice of despair, 
And asp-fanged mem'ries chorusing their tauntings. 

An ill-pvecursing scene — she mid her dead hopes* ghosts, 

A youthful type of Earth's most wretched daughters ; 
O'erhead, the astral sparklings of the midnight hosts ; 
Below, the pulsings of the sleeping waters. 
1873. 



SFENCERIAN STANZAS. 49 



SPENCERIAN STANZAS. 



The President of an institution having in trust 
three million dollars, the savings of thirteen thou- 
sand people, fled from Chicago Aug. 26, 1877. 

O fashioner of destinies forlorn, 
Impelled hy black rapacity to steal 
The garnered penny, stitched (for babe just born) 
From shirts at tenpence grudged, Time doth not heal 
The ghastly rift thy craven hand did deal 
In gentle Self-Denial's side. Thy pelf 
Should sink thy ship ; yet thou canst calmly feel — 
Perchance if tost about on state-room shelf — 
The waves beneath to be less treacherous than thyself ! 

Flee with thy half-a-million from the spot 
Where half a million curse thee as a thief ; 
And when thy fugitive remains shall rot 
Beneath some desecrated turf, there, chief, 
Should stand a baleful upas, bent in grief, 
That if a mourner ever came that way, 
Thy deadly perfidy, upsucked, from every leaf 



50 A NEST OF MICE. 

Might flow effusively, to goad his stay, 
And once more blight his heart, as did thy living clay ! 

1S77. 



A JSTEST OF MICE. 



A tiny maid once found a nest 

Of new-born mice ; 
And filled with childish horror lest, 

By grim device, 
The house-cat should the place invest, 

She sought advice. 

Her ten-yeared brother, if he must, 

Would take their care. 
-That night he told the boys with gust 
How puss did fare ; 

And they pronounced his sister's trust 
A thing quite rare ! 

How oft some little hope or aim 

Is trusting bared 
To those who, had we silent came, 



1874. 



AN ACROSTIC. 51 

Would ne'er have cared — 
Save that, mayhap, malicious s;ame 
Might worse have fared. 



TO WILL OWENS. 



WE OFT HAVE SAID. 



Why should we dread To-morrow's way, 
If we have walked aright To-day ? 
Lo ! then like safely-guarded sheep, 
Let us lie down To-night, and sleep ! 



TE PRINTER ! 

O Printer of this little book ! 
When we are prisoners of the past, 
Each reader of these lines will look 
Not on the mould less than the cast ; 
So lend me all the art thou hast ! 



DOGGEREL RHYMES. 



ODE TO THE GREA T DEEP. 



Prodigious dampness ! Tny poor shore 

Gets many a welt ; 
Thy blinding surf, with angry roar, 

Wetteth my pelt ! 

Thou deep significance of Size ! 

Thou boss of tanks ! 
But gaze I, and my hair doth rise 

In solid hanks ! 

I marvel not that thou shouldst call 

Thyself complete, 
And cringe me that all else is small — 

E'en my conceit ! 

Came I prepared, with words combined, 

To stun the gods — 
To launch strange trope upon the wind 

In ponderous wads ; 



5H ODE TO THE RAINBOW. 

But now, alas ! thy endless blare 

My genius scoops ; 
My fancy ebbs — I ne'er may wear 

Khyme's liripoops ! 

1872. 



ODE TO THE RAIN BO W. 



Celestial barber-pole ! Now vaults my thought — 

Now skirmish 'neath my trusty scalp, uncaught, 

Most frisk conceits, and wild, unhaltered tropes, 

That but more fierce cavort as my pen gropes 

Midst clumsy words and discommoding sense, 

For pompous apostrophic utterance. 

Could thy vast advertisement front the earth 

Unfadingly, quick would my soul give birth 

To feverish hankerings for my life to be 

One languid loaf, that I might ever see 

The heavenly promise which thou seem'st to show 

To barbers 1 ill-shaved victims here below. 

Who runs thy shop, that thus can paste each hue 

Upon the sky — gigantic bill-board blue ? 



ODE TO THE SUN. 57 

Communicate his name, and I will buy, 

Forthwith a tender trombone, soft and shy, 

And with its breathings I'll the ether twist, 

And blow his praise afar — nor e'er desist, 

Until my friends, with love (and ears) suggest 

That sweetest of brass rhapsodies — a rest. 
1873. 



ODE TO THE SUN. 



Caloric potentate ! Thy rise is opportune — 
A sentimental mammal claws his lyre ; 

He will in haste fife high his adolescent croon, 
Nor stop for decency or hire. 

Unchallenged Sun of myriad suns — arch-boss above ! 

The warmth of thy fierce gaze this world upon 
Doth even shame the fervor of the manly love 

I bear my mother's only son ! 

Thou art not versatile ; yet this machine hath run 
Since gassy times that 1*11 not try to spell, 

And thou bast proved to all tbat thou canst be the Sun 
By simply doing one thing well. 



3 ODE TO THE SUN. 

Thou Chairman of Committee on Celestial Light ! 

Compared with thee our brag lamps seem a mess ; 
E'en with " Chicago brass " concoct we naught so bright— 

We've not the recipe, I guess ! 

We don't cut up such shines with our poor earthly might, 

Or we a portion of thy disk would fix 
High in the fasts of our mosquito-breeding Night 

To teach the moon and stars some tricks. 

Alack ! black cloud-b ulks coast the sullen west, and Morn 

An all-day wetness hatchcth out, I ween, 
To dank this facile air, and spur each drowsy corn, 

And make my trusty togs feel mean ; 

Therefore I will no longer thrash my howling muse, 
Its sweetest doggerels clutching greedily ; 

To limply linger here would my nice sense abuse — 
I'll steer me homeward speedily ; 

For if a man don't quickly seek the inside dry 

When outside dampness is a certainty, 
Then should impassioned kick with hot repeat apply, 
And telescope his vertebrae. 
1874. 



ODE TO THE MOON. 59 



ODE TO THE MOON. 



Pellucid bunch of light ! Thy tranced mug 
Hath velveted my throat with mellow squawk ; 

I am inspired ; incline a listening lug, 
Nor suffer Common-Sense my yawp to balk. 

Poised in th^ blue, thou art a winsome sight ; 

O'er all thy radiance meek rich beauty flings ; 
And as I waltz the earth this gilt-edged night, 

My soul laves in soft reveries and things. 

Avert thy gaze and we have nought of worth ; 

For e'en the very wisest men confess 
That hope, and love, and joy, and fame of earth, 

Are moonshine — all of them — no more nor less. 

How wonderful, that one of gentle sex — 
Light's floating Empress — should, while ages go, 

And Solar whims with changing phases vex 
From arc to disc, have but one face to show ! 

Who says thou art green cheese ? My gall is stirred. 
I would that I could egg unpitying Shame 



60 A DIGEST. 

To hound the cur to whom it first occurred 
To smear with vulgar curd so fair a fame. 

If thou (soft swains forbid !) shouldst ever fluke, 
And thy process antique refuse to shine, 

What orb could mount thine abdicatedjuke ? 
What gas-contractors grieving mine ? 

My Muse's tail, alas ! begins to droop ; 

Convulsively her rhythmic pinions flap ; 
Kesignedly I chuck her in her coop, 

Nor doggerel fantasies hope yet to trap. 

1872. 



A DIGEST. 



The waiter told me if I chewsed 

I could have Hash— I meekly mewsed : 

Ambiguous dish ! By thy warm steam ! 
Give to a boarding waif some gleam 
Of hepeful light — some token grant 
That thy maligners idly rant 



A DIGEST. 61 

When they aver that every sweet 
Exhaled from thee bespeaks the meat 
Of rodent cohorts foully " served" 
By incensed cook6, who thus have swerved 
From set prescriptions, and appeased 
Themselves by hashing what displeased. 

Grant that I may, with blissful gust, 

Partake of thee. Own ' tis not just 

That I be jostled with the thought 

Of fitful female — skirmish-fraught 

With /fo*>-breadth 1 scapes, where such escapes 

Were ne'er for thee ; nor that the shapes 

Of cats athwart my mind's expanse 

Should view me oft, in hosts, askance 

Or startle me with hollow wails, 

And spectral look, and ghastly tates 

Dilating on their gloomy fate, 

And pledging me a haunting hate. 

Give me thine " ear." They oft relate 
Tales of the place whence emanate 
Thyself or kindred — for thy look 
Is very like — tales which have shook 
E'en mine own faith. Behold, they say, 
In going past ye kitchen-way, 
That dogs and sausages do walk 



62 A DIGEST. 

Tremendous distance round to balk 
The yearnings of those kitchen-folk 
( By some most foul and back-door stroke 
Of dead-fall strategy ) to end 
Their frisk ingenuousness — to blend 
The two economies — ( the brute 
With the domestic) — salt to suit, 
And, when well-mixed, no chance e'er miss 
To court the world's analysis. 

They do impeach 

Thy color changes — I was bold ; 
I asked too much — thou hast grown cold. 
Yet say they this ; if I abuse 
Their meaning, or aught else accuse — 
Then may I ne'er strike harsh-bard's lyre, 
Nor doggerel eminence desire ! 
1872. 



>k 



INDEX. 63 



CONTENTS. 



Page. 

A Pastoral Poem 7 

O Night ! O Night > 11 

Priest of the Morning 12 

Death and My Fellovjs . . ... 14 

The Poet . 15 

Irkontsk to San Francisco 17 

To John Peter Lydiard 21 

Oblivion .22 

To H. G. C. 23 

The Sparrow's Tomb 24 

A Sunset Thought 25 

Memory . . . . ' 26 

A Fragment 27 

Clouds 28 

A Leaj .29 

A Lakeside Reverie 30 

October 32 

Unrest 33 

Fame 36 



64 INDEX. 

The Cry of Toutli 37 

I Pray 38 

Alfred Myer 38 

Turn, Oh, Te Souls! . . . . 39 

Cologne on White Clover 40 

A Metaphor 41 

A Flight of Fancy .43 

Astronomy and Love .... 44 

Sad Rivalries 45 

The First Stiovj 46 

Help I 48 

Spencerian Stanzas 49 

A Nest of Mice . 50 

To Will Owens 51 

Ode to the Great Deep 55 

Ode to the Rainbow 56 

Ode to the Sun 57 

Ode to the Moon 59 

A Digest - 60 











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